Montréalités Habitat

Why doesn't the NHL do more to prevent it?

By: Elyse Lefaivre

Enforcers, players whose entire purpose is to intimidate the other team, have always been a part of the National Hockey League. In recent years, however, they have been garnering attention for reasons other than their tough play and intimidating presence. In the last few years medical researchers have begun to examine the effects repeated head injuries have on professional athletes. Researchers have discovered that repeated blows to the head suffered by athletes can result in a form of dementia. This form of dementia known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a new disease that has only been seen in people who have suffered repeated blows to the head. CTE is a progressive degenerative disease that has been linked to the deaths of many young athletes, including Minnesota Wild enforcer Dereck Boogaard. Boogaard was 28 years old when he died from the disease in may 2011. The disease results in the degeneration of brain tissue, which in turn causes dementia, as well as addictive and depressive behaviour. CTE is the only form of dementia that is preventable yet the National Hockey League (NHL) is plagued with head injuries. Although the NHL has made changes to rules in order to help prevent head injuries, players are still suffering from concussions.

Flickr image.

By: Elyse Lefaivre
"They won't treat you unless you show up with a severed arm in your hand" is what Michel Lemieux has said about the treatment in Montreal emergency rooms. Michel has had his fair share of Montreal emergency room experiences this year, having visited the Lakeshore General Hospital numerous times in the spring of 2011. Despite this severe assessment of Montreal emergency rooms, Michel and those around him still believe in Montreal's emergency room system.

Image source: Flickr

By: Elyse

As you already know cancer kills. It kills the young and the old, men and women, friends and enemies; it can kill anyone. The fight against cancer is one that has been as lengthy as it has been expensive. That is why charities that raise money for cancer research are necessary to the fight. One of these charities is the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada (LLSC), a Canadian charity, whose goal is to cure cancers of the blood. The LLSC has raised millions of dollars since its creation in 1956, and relies heavily on volunteers to help them raise the funds needed to find a cure. One of the more recent ways that volunteers have begun raising funds is through LLSC's Team in Training. Team in Training is a group of athletes who train together to run marathons. The marathons are used as a way to raise money for the research. In 2012 Team in Training has joined with Montreal's The Beat 92.5 radio station to create a team of dedicated volunteers to train for a marathon to be held this June in Alaska.

Giorgio, Old Port Montreal. Photo by Tegan Wiebe, 2011.

Hooves clop along the cobblestone paving with a carriage rolling behind. The driver and I exchange nods as the carriage passes. I pause to fill my lungs with the sweet air of vacation and new experience, condensed into one afternoon. But after having trolled around for the better part of the afternoon, tilting my head back to see the top of Notre-Dame Basilica's two steeples, watching a man riding a unicycle in a no-car zone, and walking past historic architecture, my stomach tells me its time to move on.

by Scott bloomquist

I went to wine country once, on business; it seemed out of the way. Simi Valley I think it was; sunny, rolling hills carpeted with grape vines, distantly surrounded by crowning mountain peaks. Wine is an art and a craft to lots of folks, but to me, as I sped south down the highway it was a sideshow to life.

There is something sporting about wine, in that, there is a game and a technique to the practice of enjoying it. Wine is ideally paired with companionship; it's something people get good at enjoying, and something people talk about after the fact. I've enjoyed plenty of wine in my day and shared bottles and meals with some professedly advanced palates, but no matter how much someone else's discriminating taste congratulates or rejects the qualities of a particular wine, I try to maintain my individual appreciation without the suggestions of a more seasoned drinker than myself.

By Scott Bloomquist

Al Carter was the first member of the general public to be admitted to The World Exposition in Montreal during the year 1967. His place in the procession of visitors was the product not of coincidence but of fevered enthusiasm and persistence on his part. The opening days of the Expo were fortunate and sunny as the twentieth century's most successful world's fair opened, providing a convenient metaphor about success and providence for everyone involved. The world around Expo67, dimmed to those circulating under the spotlight's beam, hardly reflects the ideal relationship between man and his world that the Expo67 displays to its more than 50.000.000 visitors over 6 months. In the same year of the Expo the U.S. Army conducts secret germ warfare experiments, The Doors release their debut album, Jimmy Hoffa begins an 8-year-sentence for bribing a jury, the first French nuclear submarine is launched, Israel's  six-day war comes and goes in less than a week, British Parliament decriminalizes homosexuality, Elvis Presley marries Priscilla, Rene Levesque leaves the National Party and John McCain is shot down over Vietnam and becomes a POW until his political career takes off; so pretty much relative global business-as-usual in the time leading up to and following The World Exposition in Montreal, where business-as-usual has always been anything but usual.

Image source: Flickr

by Scott Bloomquist

The subject of our interview was willing to share her story with us under the condition that her true identity be protected. So, for the purposes of this interview we will call her Ms. Liz.

She is a grandmother and a part-time crossing guard living in Toronto. She has spent the last three summers visiting her daughter and granddaughter in Flagstaff, Arizona. She worked for Canada Post for 14 years before her late husband's electrical supply company was granted the contract to provide components for the new LED traffic light systems for 3 Canadian cities and 14 others in the United States.

She lives here in Canada, where she grew up and where much of her family still lives.

It Doesn't Have to Be This Way
By Catherine Daccache

If you live in Quebec and have desperately searched for a family doctor for you and your family, don't expect to find one soon with the way the Ministry of Health and Services is running things. And if it's any reassurance to you, over two million Quebec citizens are also without a family doctor to care and assist them. As you may be aware, Quebec has the worst situation in all of the Canadian provinces when it comes to the penury of family physicians. But it doesn't have to be that way: Quebec ranks third amongst other provinces in terms of general practitioners per 100,000 people and it is profuse with specialist doctors (Gladu, 2007). Nonetheless, the number of citizens without a family doctor is gradually increasing, making emergency rooms and walk-in clinics overflowed with patients on a daily basis. The shortage is so big that in 2009 alone, Quebec was short of 1,175 fulltime family doctors (Roper, 2011). With the baby boomer generation soon retiring, more families will be without doctors and the deficit is sure to worsen. CLSCs have already begun closing their doors and shutting down their health services because of the significant lack of doctors (Robinson, 2000).